Breaking B1G: Week 8 bowl projections

Week 7 asked more questions about the Big Ten than it did provide answers. What we did figure out is: Illinois is awful, OSU has zero defense, Wisconsin is sitting pretty atop the "real" Leaders division and it rained a lot yesterday.

B1G Rank

Bowl

This Week

Previous Week

1st

Michigan

Michigan

2nd

Wisconsin

Wisconsin

3rd

Nebraska

Nebraska

4th

Northwestern

Purdue

5th

Purdue

Northwestern

6th

Iowa

Michigan State

7th

Michigan State

Iowa

8th

Indiana

Minnesota

• Leaders division, you're killing me! First it's Purdue that seems to be the team to beat, then we default back to Wisconsin. Now all of the sudden Indiana seems to be playing the best football*, albeit still losing. Who's it going to be?

• Everyone proclaimed Michigan State was going to walk through the Legends division en route to their second consecutive B1G title game appearance. Never mind that their offense lost their senior starting QB, all of their WRs, and their running game was ranked 11th in the league in 2011. Yeah, their defense was great, but no one knew how much they'd miss Worthy. But man, that teams looks like it's really hit the skids. I'm sure they'll ramp it up to play Michigan this week, but if they lose in Ann Arbor, the wheels just might fall off.

• Penn State, not bowl eligible, was off this week. As was Nebraska. They'll try and rebound from the OSU loss in Evanston this week, in what is all of the sudden a pretty meaningful Legends matchup. Meanwhile, Iowa hosts the Nittany Lions, where we hope O'Brien, McGloin and crew can help Michigan out a little bit.